Tuesday, December 29, 2020

7 Ways Governments Used the Coronavirus Pandemic to Crush Human Rights

Breitbart.com reported on December 25, 2020:

by John Hayward

Human rights activists were generally downbeat about the global state of affairs in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, often pointing to 2020 as one of the worst years in memory for declining civil liberties.

Here are seven ways governments have used the Chinese coronavirus pandemic to diminish human rights and civil liberties.

Freedom of Speech: The United Nations was among many agencies and advocacy groups to worry about the damage inflicted on freedom of speech during the pandemic, which included both rampant disinformation and ham-handed restrictions on speech in the name of controlling “disinformation.”

“People have died because governments have lied, hidden information, detained reporters, failed to level with people about the nature of the threat, and criminalized individuals under the guise of ‘spreading false information. People have suffered because some governments would rather protect themselves from criticism than allow people to share information, learn about the outbreak, know what officials are or are not doing to protect them,” U.N. Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression David Kaye said in July.

“In the past three months, numerous governments have used the COVID [Chinese coronavirus] -pandemic to repress expression in violation of their obligations under human rights law,” Kaye continued, citing Belarus, Cambodia, China, Iran, Egypt, India, Myanmar, and Turkey as nations of particular concern.

“I am further concerned about efforts to repress disinformation using tools of criminal law, which are likely to hamper the free flow of information, such as in Brazil and Malaysia,” Kaye added.

The International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX), an international education and development nonprofit, published a report in September called Freedom of Expression During Covid-19 that took a detailed look at how 20 different governments used the pandemic to curtail freedom of speech. Many of these restrictions were justified as efforts to control disinformation. Governments often cited the pandemic as an excuse to dramatically tighten existing restrictions on speech. Few examples of effective resistance to the new “emergency” restrictions were cited.

Press freedom: Related to the free speech issue, but distinct enough to consider the subject on its own, is the damage inflicted upon journalism by the pandemic. In a year-end report published last week, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) found more reporters imprisoned around the world than ever before, many arrested for coverage of the pandemic that contradicted official narratives. Unsurprisingly, Communist China was especially brutal about arresting reporters for pandemic coverage that challenged the government.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) published a similar report, finding over 130 members of the press jailed for reporting on the pandemic, including citizen journalists.  

“Behind every single one of these cases is the fate of a person who faces criminal trials, long imprisonment and often mistreatment because he did not submit to censorship and repression,” said RSF’s director in Germany, Katja Gloger.

Religious freedom: Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito warned in November that the pandemic imposed “previously unimaginable restrictions on individual liberty, from freedom of speech down to the right to a speedy trial, since almost every activity involving human contact has been restricted.”

“The COVID crisis has served as a sort of constitutional stress test, and in doing so, it has highlighted disturbing trends that were already present before the virus struck,” Alito said.

Justice Alito highlighted the danger to religious liberty, as houses of worship have been forced to obey extremely tight social distancing restrictions – often much tighter than activities involving more people and much greater risk of coronavirus transmission. He pointed to Nevada orders imposing much lower attendance caps on churches than casinos as an example.

“Take a quick look at the Constitution. You will see the free exercise clause of the First Amendment, which protects religious liberty. You will not find a craps clause or a blackjack clause or a slot machine clause,” he said.

Alito suggested – and some other religious freedom activists have explicitly asserted – that statist ideologues are using the coronavirus as an excuse to stamp out the freedom to congregate and worship, while giving free pandemic passes to activities they favor for ideological reasons, like mass protests. This hypocrisy and hostility to religion became especially obvious in New York, where the Supreme Court sided with religious groups against Governor Andrew Cuomo in November.

Freedom of movement: Quarantines, travel bans, lockdowns, and similar restrictions are obviously difficult to square with the freedom of citizens to travel as they desire, which in turn compromises other human rights that involve the movement of people and goods. Human Rights Watch (HRW) listed this conflict near the top of its dissertation on human rights during the coronavirus crisis:

Restrictions such as mandatory quarantine or isolation of symptomatic people must, at a minimum, be carried out in accordance with the law. They must be strictly necessary to achieve a legitimate objective, based on scientific evidence, proportionate to achieve that objective, neither arbitrary nor discriminatory in application, of limited duration, respectful of human dignity, and subject to review.

Broad quarantines and lockdowns of indeterminate length rarely meet these criteria and are often imposed precipitously, without ensuring the protection of those under quarantine – especially at-risk populations. Because such quarantines and lockdowns are difficult to impose and enforce uniformly, they are often arbitrary or discriminatory in application. 

HRW noted that China’s quarantines were exceptionally brutal, listing cases of people killed by them, including children. In the darkest days of the outbreak in China, the government was locking infected people in their homes and welding bars over the doors and windows. Somewhat less horrifying, but still disturbing, was the recent emergency lockdown in South Australia that forbade imprisoned citizens from getting fresh air and exercise outside, or even walking their dogs.

Surveillance vs. privacy rights: The coronavirus heightened concerns about intensive government surveillance, everywhere from dystopian China to the free world. There are good reasons to fear more governments will adopt China’s tools for monitoring citizens in the name of disease prevention, including versions of the mandatory smartphone app Beijing uses to color-code citizens for their infection status. 

Less draconian systems than China’s have been criticized for endangering privacy rights, such as the coronavirus alert program in South Korea, which had a habit of blasting out ostensibly “anonymous” alerts about infection that could easily be used to identify the individuals in question.

Big Data solutions to the pandemic tend to create massive databases of sensitive information that could be employed by governments for other purposes, or compromised by hackers. Legal protections for privacy in the digital era are still evolving, and those protections can be all too easily shredded in a time of pandemic crisis, or perhaps other “crises” the political class decides are the moral or practical equivalent of the coronavirus pandemic.

Political freedom: For better or worse, justified or otherwise, the pandemic led to a sizable number of delayed or canceled elections around the world. Opposition candidates frequently accused the governments in power of using the pandemic as an excuse to stave off elections that might have knocked them out of office. On the other hand, Iran’s stubborn insistence on holding an election for political theater was cited as one of the driving forces in that country’s horrific coronavirus outbreak. The effects of pandemic emergency measures on the 2020 U.S. presidential election will be debated for years to come.

“Since the coronavirus outbreak began, the condition of democracy and human rights has worsened in 80 countries, with particularly sharp deterioration in struggling democracies and highly repressive states, according to the experts surveyed by the project. More than 60 percent of the respondents predicted that the pandemic’s impact on political rights and civil liberties in their countries of focus would be mostly negative for the next three to five years,” Freedom House warned in October.

“What began as a worldwide health crisis has become part of the global crisis for democracy. Governments in every part of the world have abused their powers in the name of public health, seizing the opportunity to undermine democracy and human rights,” charged Freedom House President Michael J. Abramowitz.

The pandemic was generally useful for political repression and nourished authoritarianism around the globe, including the democracies of the Western world. Arguably all of the other ways in which rulers and elites used the coronavirus to crush human rights contribute to the erosion of political freedom – restricting free speech and association inevitably weaken democracy, for example.

Expanding government power: In America and around the world, opportunistic politicians and ideologues are using the pandemic to permanently increase their power and wealth. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) believes the virus it unleashed upon mankind will usher in the final triumph of centralized authoritarian power over free-market democracy because it supposedly proved that only authoritarian regimes can deal with a massive crisis like the Chinese coronavirus.

Coronavirus lockdowns created power structures that can be used to enforce the will of the State in countless other areas. Skepticism that any of those “emergency” dictatorial powers will be relinquished after the Wuhan coronavirus recedes is warranted. 

Modern history suggests it is more likely those mechanisms of control will be repurposed, finding new missions after the pandemic is over – if, indeed, the political class is ever willing to declare it “over.” 

Once people have grown accustomed to life-changing emergency measures, their rulers will be reluctant to let that highly useful state of emergency end, at least not until an equally useful emergency comes along. The very nature of human rights and civil liberties could be redefined by the pandemic and its aftermath. At the very least, it is likely that governments across the free world will use the pandemic to argue that they should consume and control more of the private sector’s wealth, so they have enough resources to deal with a menace on the scale of the Chinese coronavirus. The “right” to be protected from pandemics – and other crises deemed comparably important by politicians and media – will be said to trump every other right, and unlike the other rights it displaces, it will require ever greater concentrations of power in national capitals to administer.

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Sunday, December 20, 2020

Cardinal Burke: Forces of the 'Great Reset' have used COVID to advance 'evil agenda'

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Angela Merkel German chancellor under fire over Communist links

She denies she was close to the Communist rulers in East Germany, where she grew up.

So this 1972 photo of her in military-style uniform has left German Chancellor Angela Merkel ‘not amused’.

Then called Angela Kasner and aged 17, she is shown happily involved in a civil defence exercise under the gaze of an East German officer.

Drills included first aid and preparing for nuclear attack.

Mrs Merkel (circled) who was 17-year-old Angela Kasner when the picture was taken in 1972, is shown in fatigues marching with a group of friends and an East German officer

Mrs Merkel (circled) who was 17-year-old Angela Kasner when the picture was taken in 1972, is shown in fatigues marching with a group of friends and an East German officer

A member of Italy's metalworkers union walks by a banner with a picture of German Chancellor Angela Merkel during a demonstration in Rome. The unrest came as Mrs Merkel tried to dampen speculation over her links with East German communists

A member of Italy's metalworkers union walks by a banner with a picture of German Chancellor Angela Merkel during a demonstration in Rome. The unrest came as Mrs Merkel tried to dampen speculation over her links with East German communists

All children had to take part if they wanted to go to university, but Mrs Merkel is also alleged to have been a propaganda secretary for the youth movement, the FDJ.

The photo was found by an old schoolfriend, Sonja Felssberg, 58, and handed to a German newspaper.

Her smile is easily recognisable and her forage cap is set at a jaunty angle as she strides along at the High School Hermann Matern in Templin, where she was brought up behind the iron curtain.

Not even illness or a death in the family allowed for the youngsters to skip the martial lessons - they were simply postponed but had to be completed.

Sonja Felssberg, now 58 and an old school comrade, found the photo and handed it to a national German newspaper.

Mrs Merkel will hope the row doesn't undermine her bid for a third term in office

Mrs Merkel will hope the row doesn't undermine her bid for a third term in office

It was published as Mrs Merkel, who was the subject of austerity protests in Italy at the weekend, tried to play down allegations in a new book that she was much closer to the Communist rulers of the lost Socialist state than she previously admitted to, including holding a post as a propaganda secretary in the youth movement the FDJ.

Mrs. Felssberg said: 'We all had to sleep ten to a room in bunk beds when we did the exercises. In the day we learned things like treating wounds and stabilising patients - not much different from what you would learn today in first aid training with the Red Cross.

'But we also had to march and learn to use maps and a compass for hikes in the woods and wilderness. It was long ago but I remember it very well - and Angela.'

Mrs. Merkel is aiming for a third bid in office in the autumn.

She is hoping that the rumours about her alleged closeness to the politburo of East Germany will not diminish her chances.

But the photo of the old days has reportedly upset her.

One of her aides said: 'Madam Chancellor is not amused'

 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2328536/Angela-Merkel-Communist-links-new-image-uniform-released.html

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Friday, December 11, 2020

The False Prophet of the Apocalypse{VIDEO}...

LifeSiteNews.com reported on December 11, 2020:

by Fr. Frank Unterhalt

There is a prophecy of St. Francis of Assisi in an authentic and renowned source, in which he speaks of the appearance of an apostatic antipope in the time of tribulation (“futurae tribulationis”).[1]

It says “that someone who is not canonically elected and is infected with heretical wickedness, at the turning point of that tribulation raised to the papacy, would make a refined effort to give many the death of his error to drink” (“quod aliquis, non canonice electus et haeretica pravitate infectus, in articulo tribulationis illius ad papatum assumptus, multis mortem sui erroris sagaciter propinare moliretur”).[2] St. Francis of Assisi predicted that this figure “tyrannically usurps the papacy” (“papatum usurpare tyrannice”).[3]

It is in this sense that in our time St. Padre Pio has entrusted to his spiritual son, the famous exorcist Don Gabriele Amorth, the following dramatic words: “It is satan who has entered the womb of the Church, and within a short while, he will rule over a false church.”[4]

St. Padre Pio knew the Third Secret of Fatima — it had actually been revealed to him four years before the little shepherds.[5]

 

The well-known Spanish journalist José María Zavala asked Don Gabriele Amorth about it in more detail, and summarized the conclusion of the dialog as follows: “There were two recurring and interrelated themes: the great apostasy in the Church from its apex — in accordance with the testimony of Cardinal Ciappi — and the introduction of the devil to the head of the Church by means of a pope under the control of satan.”[6]

In this context, Zavala referred to the exact correspondence of these words to the statement of Frère Michel, a great expert on the message of Fatima and author of a trilogy on the subject. He stated: “It will be the time of the decisive battle between the Virgin and the devil. A flood of diabolical confusion will spread throughout the world. Satan will penetrate the highest levels of the Church. This will be the great apostasy announced for the last days, […] the ‘false prophet’ who betrays the Church in favor of the ‘beast,’ according to the prophecy of the Apocalypse.”[7]

In fact, as Sr. Lucia herself pointed out[8], the secret is revealed in the last book of Holy Scripture.

In that book, there is talk of the fiery red dragon (cf. Apoc 12:3), which is manifest in atheistic communism, and of the black beast (cf. Apoc 13:1-2), which represents freemasonry.

Then it says: “Another beast came up out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon. It exercised all the power of the first beast before its eyes. It made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast” (Apoc 13:11-12).

The beast, which looks like a lamb, represents the ecclesiastical freemasonry that has penetrated into the interior of the temple — especially into the hierarchy. Its goal is to overcome the Catholic Church from within. It wants and achieves for a short time the creation of an idol — a false christ and a false church.[9]

The reference to the hierarchy of the Church is crucial, in which the mitre — with two horns — indicates the fullness of the priesthood. The beast that comes up out of the earth looks like a servant of Christ, the Lamb, but is a servant of satan, the dragon.

Thus, if the second beast is ecclesiastical freemasonry, it is personified and literally elevated to the summit in the false prophet at its head[10], who is expressly designated as such in three passages of the Apocalypse (Apoc 16:13; 19:20; 20:10).

He is the pseudo-religious leader of the anti-church. Through grave heresies and despicable sacrileges he advances the great apostasy from the top. He deceives and cheats the inhabitants of the earth (cf. Apoc 13:14) and wants to lead people to worship the antichrist, whose direct forerunner he is (cf. Apoc 13:12).

The former Bishop of Fulda, the exegete of the New Testament Prof. Dr. Dr. Eduard Schick, has also pointed out this dimension in his work on the Apocalypse: “The second beast’s mission is the unlimited seizure of power by the first; for this purpose it is ordered and equipped by the first; it is to lead people to recognize the first as what it claims to be, namely God himself. All his propaganda aims at this in words and deeds […] It is a matter of religiously transfiguring the world power of the antichrist and getting mankind to pay him cultic veneration in turn.”

Bishop Schick accordingly speaks of a satanic trinity. It consists of the dragon and the two beasts.

The first beast, which represents freemasonry, is personified in the antichrist, and the second, which represents ecclesiastical freemasonry, in the false prophet.[12] Their goal is the unrestricted rule of the world, the kingdom of the devil on earth.

“The rulers of the world, who had placed themselves in the service of the ‘satanic trinity,’ believe that the favorable opportunity has come to lead together the final destructive strike against the Church of Christ on earth. The satanic triad doubles its propaganda for this purpose.”[13]

Archbishop Dr. Dr. Fulton J. Sheen made it clear in this context that this agenda is marked by the establishment of a counter-church: “It will have all the notes and characteristics of the Church, but in reverse and emptied of its divine content. There will be a mystical body of the antichrist, which will resemble in all its externals the Mystical Body of Christ.”[14] Accordingly, an anti-church at its head necessarily needs an anti-pope, who is the false prophet of the Apocalypse.

The hostile aspiration wants to seduce people to “accept a new religion without the cross, a liturgy without the hereafter, a religion to destroy religion, or a politics that is a religion.”[15]

Blessed Anna Katharina Emmerich, the great German mystic, has seen and described the rise of the pernicious anti-church. She “saw how […] another dark church arose in Rome.”[16] In doing so, she used a drastic term that clearly demonstrates the apocalyptic extent of the event: “But the whole house was dark and black, and all that happened in it was darkness and gloom […] I also saw how very bad the consequences of this after-church would be. I saw it grow, I saw many heretics of all ranks go to the city.”[17]

Blessed Anna Katharina Emmerich saw the closure of the churches and the great distress of the Catholic communities everywhere.[18] She described the spread of the “dark after-church” as an implementation of the antichristian decisive struggle: “The sect receives its signature from the apocalyptic beast which, risen from the sea, dwells with it and drives it to fight against the flock of Christ.”[19]

Against the background of this apocalyptic period, the famous message of La Salette echoes like a loud and insistent warning: “Rome will lose faith and become the seat of the antichrist”[20].

November 30, 2020
St. Andrew, Apostle, brother of St. Peter
Fr. Frank Unterhalt

Translation by LifeSite’s Martin Bürger

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Thursday, December 3, 2020

Eva Vlaardingerbroek speaks out against modern day feminism and migration

 

https://www.nielsenreport.org  Dutch girl speaks out against modern day feminism and migration. At a party conference of new Dutch political party Forum for Democracy, a young lady with the name Eva Vlaardingerbroek gave a surprisingly refreshing speech in which she spoke out against modern day feminism. She stated that modern day feminism (also known as 3rd wave feminism) falls under the umbrella of cultural marxism. This speech has been translated into English.

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